Stormwater Runoff Remote Sensing Analysis in Southern California
Abstract
The urbanization of coastal regions has directly influenced environmental decline and ocean pollution from stormwater runoff. During rain storms, the runoff cleans the streets and collects contaminated material which is directly released into the coastal zones without treatment. Stormwater runoff leads to bacterial overgrowth harming beach water quality off of highly populated coastal cities. Besides the growing bacterial contamination, runoff adds health hazards to the greater portion of the coast. Heal the Bay (HTB) is a non-profit organization committed to making ocean conditions optimal along California. They have provided us with FIB (fecal indicator bacteria) data obtained along beaches in the Santa Monica Bay and the San Pedro area during rain events occurring in Southern California. We used satellite SAR imagery and other satellite optical imagery to allow for spatial and temporal evaluation of surface particles that potentially pollute ocean ecosystems. In this study, we evaluated SAR data using Heal the Bay FIB points to reflect shoreline fecal matter contamination affecting the SCB. The primary objective of this project is to further analyze Heal the Bay fecal matter contamination and evaluate the effectiveness of using SAR-detected stormwater plumes as a useful method to determine contaminated coastlines. The locations analyzed for bacterial contamination include Los Angeles River, San Gabriel River, and Ballona Creek. We evaluated the coast in short time series from winter 2018 to the present. Sentinel-1 SAR images were used to observe targeted plumes. Turbidity, rain events, and bacterial data were the parameters accounted for connecting the presence of a plume image to sewage spill.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.H33O2234O
- Keywords:
-
- 1812 Drought;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1817 Extreme events;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1821 Floods;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1855 Remote sensing;
- HYDROLOGY